The Hangman's Daughter, by Oliver Potzsch

I read this book on my Kindle. I was clicking through the Kindle Daily Post awhile ago and saw that this book was on special for $0.99, so I thought "Why not!?" It was written by a German TV screenwriter, and to be honest, it read like a screenplay. This book would honestly make a great TV mini series or movie. It had really great dialogue and descriptions. It was written very well and the story line was pretty unique. I had never read anything like this before, and although this is my first book review, I have read quite a few books. The story goes as follows:
We are introduces to Jakob Kuisl, a hangman. It is his job to torture and execute people. He has a family, but the family it alienated, because the hangman is a curse to the people, but somebody has to do it. His daughter, Magdalena is introduced, and regardless of the title, she has very little to do with the story. The young physician in town is in love with the hangman's daughter, but it is highly frowned upon because the hangman's daughter is a disgrace and can only marry into other hangman families. Anyways, those are the three main characters, Jakob, Magdalena and Simon, the physician. A boy is found by the river, murdered, and with a symbol tattooed on his shoulder related to witchcraft. The midwife of the town is arrested and accused of murder and being a witch, and this is where the story begins. Jakob takes it upon himself to exonerate the midwife and find out who is behind the chaos in town that includes multiple child murders and attempted kidnappings, the destruction of a leper house, and the involvement of the devil. The devil is a solider with a bone to pick with Kuisl.
A huge mystery begins, and it is quite enthralling. I had a hard time putting the book down, because like Simon and Jakob, you are putting pieces together as you go. You think you have an idea of who the real killer was, and then all that goes out the window because of another piece of the puzzle, or mosaic, as that is used as the metaphor throughout the whole book. The missing mosaic piece.
I won't give away the ending, but it was okay. Kind of anti-climactic, because once all the pieces are put together and everything comes together, it all kind of turns out to be people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and all assumptions that were made were entirely wrong because there was really no binding pieces. But it was fun getting to the answer.

The ending was kind of drawn out and it eventually felt like maybe Potzsch was trying to pack in as much punch as he could, and it wasn't really necessary. As for the title, I really think it should have been titled something else, because even though Magdalena helped figure everything out and the love story that was intertwined throughout the mystery was led by her, it is kind of misleading to see the title and think the story is going to have a lot to do with her.

Overall I give the book a B-. It kept me on my toes, and I definitely enjoyed reading it.